Lament on wars in the deserts
by Sandra Renew
School of Music poet, Canberra, Australia
in response to Surgery on Afghan Boy

When we unleash war we cannot mend it.
The thought is unbearable
but the moment the bells toll in our deserts
there is, at once, terrible insouciance
carefree unconcern
about our breaking hearts
even though the knowing
sits heavy on our shoulders
and imprints on our skin
to be carried into the future.

The balm for the unbearable thought,
for a breaking heart,
when war is unleashed,
when we watch a soldier move
and dance in death
with light shadows on the wall,
when small boys herding goats are crushed
and bleeding in the sand,
when girls on their way to school and weddings
predict their own death by hidden bombs,
when the sannyasi of awakening
struggle to stir the hard edge of compassion
in hearts of complacency and entitlement,
and all the famous people pass on by …

the balm for the breaking heart,
and the unbearable knowledge of war,
although the tantric path is hidden,
the balm has to be
a conscious, luminous spirit, and love.

Sannyasi: laying aside, ascetic, Hindu religious mendicant, seeker.
Tantra: any of a class of Hindu or Buddhist mystical and devotional writings, loom, groundwork, doctrine.